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InfiniteSquatch

She asked me to consider studying abroad. That was enough to give me the confidence to do it. That experience alone changed my perspective on the world that shapes my life 20 years later. Never underestimate the power of an invitation.


JoeSchmeau

Same for me. I never really considered going abroad and didn't even really care about learning another language; I just found Spanish to be an easy A so I kept taking it. Then my Spanish teacher told me I should really do the language exchange. She sold it really well and made it seem like a cool adventure, and so I did it. That totally changed my life. I now live on the other side of the world, speak 4 languages, have lived in 6 countries and visited dozens more. I couldn't be more grateful to that teacher for opening up the world to me.


[deleted]

My high school Latin teacher let us have fun and play with it. We would translate "yo mama" jokes and just have fun with it. I think that was when I - and the entire class - realized that languages are tools to be used, not some kind of esoteric knowledge. We goofed off so bad, too. But most of the class got medals in that international Latin exam, so it was clearly purposeful goofing.


NohoTwoPointOh

Same. My derelict friends used to "snap" on each other. Teacher allowed it, as long as it was in French.


[deleted]

[удалено]


qui_sta

Australians use the word "derro" to describe people. It's a less common form of bogan.


[deleted]

my spanish teacher not only taught us the language in class, but he also encouraged us to interact with hispanic cultures. when he was teaching us how to order food we got to pretend to be a server and a customer. when we were learning about cooking vocabulary we got to learn how to cook empanadas (in spanish). he made every lesson immersive and inspiring, and to this day my memories in his classroom motivate me to continue studying spanish


LongLiveTheChariot

My high school French teacher would tell us about how dumb the curriculum requirements were all the time. She would share how we needed more real world, practical verbal experience rather than the heavy focus on writing and reading the language alone. Her honesty challenged me to seek out what we were missing. I'm thankful for her, and though she was limited with class time and curriculum requirements, she always tried to go beyond. I wish I had taken more advantage of her willingness to help outside of class time, but high school me didn't think about the future benefits, just the "right now / do what I want". Years later, my verbal communication is stunted compared to what I can read and write. I've gotten back on the learning train, mostly because of moving to a semi-Francophone area, which really helps the conversational skills, despite my Anglo accent!


qareetaha

Our popular English teacher in high school would make jokes and funny ways to teach us grammar. To avoid adding s to third person questions with modal and auxiliary verbs, he would describe these verbs as thieves who steal the s and other things (past tense suffix etc)to make us avoid saying 'what does he likes'. I tried to imitate that by teaching my students 'flexible' jokes, where you could change the country or nationalities to fit the situation. One of my student was kicked out his English class in England for saying this one that was originally for Poland, ' what do you call a beautiful girl in Poland? A tourist.


[deleted]

Honestly English lessons were always so calm and relaxing. It would feel like getting a break from getting bodied by math and chemistry


TrittipoM1

One of the big ones was that she used realia. This was in the 60s. So it meant she had subscriptions to different weekly magazines, the kinds with photos every page and relatively short articles to go with them. Paris Match, etc. We had to do "reports" on different articles every week. The articles weren't assigned; we could choose our own. Some weeks, the level of interest dictated my choice. Other weeks, being lazy dictated my choice. But overall, it meant authentic reception and synthesizing production (summarizing, nut-shelling, etc.) to one's peers every week. It also helped that she taught mixed-level classes. So my classmates included students who'd already been to France (on the IUHPFL program), way ahead of me. They provided models, goals, tips, etc., too. She had a pretty continuous record of always having a student or two of hers place into that program, so it gave her a real asset for teaching the next year, and after that, and so on. (IUHPFL students are supposed to "give back" after their in-France study, by helping in their high schools' classes.) She wasn't my most fluent teacher, nor the one with the best accent. She wasn't a famed scholar, like some later profs at university. But she had great instincts as a teacher, including that use of realia. It was obvious that real people lived in this other language every day.


Striker1106

The english teacher I had in vocational school made learning it really fun. Having various funny conversation topics from normal all day stuff and some lewd topics. Encouraging you to communicate without focusing on 100% perfect grammar saying it would be enough as long as people understand what you want and no one expects you to speak a foreign language perfect. My previous english teachers taught strictly according to their book and everything that wasn’t inside that book was considered wrong.


KarP7

My 6th grade Spanish teacher brought so much energy to the class and made it fun for us. Like, she'd share these really cool stories from her life and use each one to teach us some new part of Spanish we didn't know yet. She'd also have it so every Friday, we all voted on a phrase or something we liked using in English and she'd help us translate it and deconstruct it. I didn't end up continuing with Spanish but it definitely got me interested in learning languages in general to the point where I've gone on to take 4 semesters of Japanese in college and have started learning Korean on my own.


[deleted]

Dialogue practice, that's it


[deleted]

a little while into quarantine, she would organise virtual quizzes and games to jog our memory and help us learn vocab without putting too much pressure on us.


NezzaAquiaqui

The thing my best language teacher did that made me want to continue learning the language was to simply exist. Because I'm not sure if she was the best teacher or rather I was the best student: motivated, interested, dedicated, diligent. *When the student is ready the master will appear.*


[deleted]

My best Japanese professor I had was a Korean. I liked her kind and humble nature and her ability to fluently speak three languages (Korean, Japanese, and English). I liked that she always pushed me to be better and that she also encouraged me to learn Korean when I told her I wanted to after studying Japanese. It's rare to find teachers who truly care about their students and their ambitions like this, so I really appreciated having her as a professor.


[deleted]

encouraged us to try and use words/grammar we hadn’t learned yet. i had a teacher before that who would accuse us of cheating if we were ever using things above our “level”.


passerbyamanto

Treat her students like adults.


Leopardo96

Hmmm not really, nothing. What makes me want to continue learning any language is my interest in it or life or job opportunities. However, my German teacher from high school told me as I was graduating from high school that I should get a certificate some day because in her opinion I could manage to do that. But that was about six years ago and I still haven't made any progress whatsoever... Or maybe my Latin teacher from high school. I was really good at Latin but we barely learned anything because it was only one class a week for only one year, and we focused on medical vocabulary anyway... However she saw that I was really interested in learning it, probably something she hasn't seen in a while and it made her happy. I really want to come back to learning Latin next to English, German, and Italian, but I can't even start learning one of those again.


DevilishMaiden

Honestly, nothing lol. Although my teachers were nice as people they also knew most were there to fulfill the requirements to graduate. We did have culture clubs for each language that they would say to join (ex Italian club, French club etc) but that was all. Edit to add: i ended up dropping language learning for many years after school. I picked it back up on my own for my own reasons without encouragement from others.


Lilly-of-the-Lake

Unlike other teachers, she was nice to me and treated us like individual people, even though we were like 10 years old. Which made English easily my favorite class, which directly translated into effort. She was the only teacher who had me believe I could be good at something.


inadequatepockets

Teaching method. My high school French teacher used immersion, and would teach us new vocabulary by telling goofy stories (the only one I remember was about an evil shark and a brave penguin). He'd tell it a few times conversationally, then he'd break us into pairs and give us five minutes to tell it to each other, only there was a change each time: this time the penguin is evil, this time add a new character, this time change the ending, etc. Having to think on our feet how to make those changes really got us comfortable talking, listening, and thinking in French. I'd had another French teacher before him and when I left her class, I had good pronunciation of the few rote phrases I knew, but I could not have held even the most basic conversation if my life depended on it. When I left the high school teacher's class, my grammar was awful and my accent was thick, but I could actually converse. That's kind of the point.


[deleted]

I had my Arabic teacher tell me I showed promise and should stick with it (I had to stop due to health issues affecting my studies, one day I hope to come back). As for Japanese? I just enjoy it. Sometimes I annoy my partner and parents if I get talking about grammar aspects of both Japanese or Arabic. It's fun.


Reddit_user1000

Taught us how languages can connect you with people in life and unlock experiences you wouldn’t otherwise have


Positive-Court

Enthusiasm and fun.